ARIZ85 and patent-driven knowledge support

AbstractThe growing complexity of technical solutions, which encompass knowledge from different scientific fields, makes necessary, also for multi-disciplinary working teams, the consultation of information sources. Indeed, tacit knowledge is essential, but often not sufficient to achieve a proficient problem solving process. Besides, the most comprehensive tool of the TRIZ body of knowledge, i.e. ARIZ, requires, more or less explicitly, the retrieval of new knowledge in order to entirely exploit its potential to drive towards valuable solutions.A multitude of contributions from the literature support various common tasks encountered when using TRIZ and requiring additional information; most of them hold the objective of speeding up the generation of inventive solutions thanks to the capabilities of text mining techniques. Nevertheless, no global study has been conducted to fully disclose the effective knowledge requirements of ARIZ. With respect to this deficiency, the present paper illustrates an analysis of the algorithm with the specific objective of identifying the different types of information needs that can be satisfied by patents. The results of the investigation lay bare the most significant gaps of the research in the field. Further on, an initial proposal is advanced to structure the retrieval of relevant information from patent sources currently not supported by existing methodologies and software applications, so as to exploit the vast amount of technical knowledge contained in there. An illustrative experiment sheds light on the relevance of control parameters as input terms for the definition of search queries aimed at retrieving patents sharing the same physical contradiction of the problem to be treated

Natural Language Processing in-and-for Design Research

We review the scholarly contributions that utilise Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to support the design process. Using a heuristic approach, we collected 223 articles published in 32 journals and within the period 1991-present. We present state-of-the-art NLP in-and-for design research by reviewing these articles according to the type of natural language text sources: internal reports, design concepts, discourse transcripts, technical publications, consumer opinions, and others. Upon summarizing and identifying the gaps in these contributions, we utilise an existing design innovation framework to identify the applications that are currently being supported by NLP. We then propose a few methodological and theoretical directions for future NLP in-and-for design research

Collaborative framework in computer aided innovation 2.0 : Application to process system engineering

In economy nowadays, the act of innovation is in general social; it requires the management of knowledge, and the techniques and methodologies to drive it. Innovation is not the product of one isolated intelligence, instead, it is the result of a multi-disciplinary workgroup lead by a process or a methodology. The conceptual design, which is found in the first stages of the innovation process, represents one of the most important challenges in industry nowadays. One of the main challenges faced by chemical industries related to the conceptual design phase is to provide the means in the form of methods and computational tools, for solving problems systematically, at the same time that benefiting from the collective efforts of individual intelligences involved. Hence, the main objective of this work is to provide a solution to improve the creative capacity of a team involved in the innovation process, in particular the preliminary (critical) phase of conceptual design. Consequently, it is important to understand the techniques, methods and tools that best support the generation of novel ideas and creative solutions. In addition, it is necessary to study the contribution of information and communication technologies as the mean to support collaboration. Web technologies are considered as complementary tools to implement methods and techniques in collaborative design, and particularly in the conceptual design stage. These technologies allow setting up distributed collaborative environments to bring together the resources and the experts who can relate the existing pieces of knowledge to new contexts. It is the synergy created in this kind of environment, which allow producing valuable concepts and ideas in the form of Collective Intelligence. Nevertheless in most existing solutions for collective intelligence or crowdsourcing environments, they do not report the use of a particular methodology to improve the participants' creativity. The solution in this work describes a social network service that enables users to cooperatively solve problems oriented (but not limited) to the phase of conceptual design. In this work we propose that the use of Collective Intelligence in combination with the model TRIZ-CBR could lead the creative efforts in a team to develop innovative solutions. With this work we are looking for connecting experts from one particular field, TRIZ practitioners and stakeholders with the objective to solve problems in collaboration unlashing the collective intelligence to improve creativity. This work uses the basis of the concept named "Open CAI 2.0" to propose a solution in the form of a theoretical framework. The contributions seek to move the development of the field in Computer Aided Innovation a step forward

Um framework baseado em ontologia de apoio à gestão estratégica da inovação em organizações de P&D+i

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia e Gestão do Conhecimento, Florianópolis, 2013.A inovação amplia a produtividade e a competitividade de organizações, requisitos essenciais para tornar próspera e sustentável a economia de um país. Organizações de P&D+i cumprem um papel fundamental nesse contexto que teve sua complexidade ampliada com a globalização e o surgimento da inovação aberta. Este trabalho propõe um framework de apoio à gestão estratégica com vistas a dar indicativos das condições ambientais em organizações de P&D+i para a inovação. A proposta é sustentada por uma abordagem quali-quantitativa da pesquisa, baseada em múltiplos estágios de coletas de dados. Entrevistas semiestruturadas foram conduzidas em sete organizações de P&D+i da Espanha para complementar os conceitos de inovação levantados a partir das revisões de literatura e de documentos. Com a modelagem dos dados obtidos das fontes de coleta, foi possível identificar os componentes, estruturas ou conceitos para o framework. O framework tem como tripé estrutural um instrumento de coleta de dados e duas ontologias. Uma ontologia de domínio para representar os conceitos de inovação e uma ontologia de questionário, na qual são instanciadas as questões do instrumento de coleta de dados. O framework foi aplicado em cinco organizações de P&D+i, duas organizações da Espanha e três do Brasil, para verificar sua viabilidade. O principal resultado da pesquisa é a integração dos conceitos fundamentais de inovação em um framework com aplicação em organizações de P&D+i. Os resultados obtidos com a aplicação do instrumento de coleta de dados e informações para o framework mostraram a aplicabilidade em distintas organizações de P&D+i, e o potencial para agregar dispersos conceitos de inovação. A ontologia genérica de questionário, com potencial de disponibilização pública para reuso em distintas áreas de conhecimento, é um dos resultados da pesquisa que trará benefícios às comunidades científica e não científica. Abstract : Innovation increases productivity and competitiveness of organizations, the essential aspects for a prosperous and sustainable economy. R&D+i organizations play a key role in this context that had its complexity expanded with globalization and the emergence of open innovation. This paper proposes a framework to pinpoint organizational environmental conditions for innovation in R&D+i organizations to support strategic management. The research is based on quali-quantitative approach with multiple stages of data collection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in seven R&D+i organizations of Spain to complement the concepts of innovation collected from literature reviews and documents. After modeling the data collected from different sources, it was possible to identify the components, structures and concepts for the framework. The framework is sustained on a tripod structure of one survey instrument and two ontologies. One domain ontology to represent the concepts of innovation, and another ontology named questionnaire which instances are questions of the survey. The framework was applied in five R&D+i organizations to verify the framework feasibility: two organizations from Spain and three from Brazil. The main result of the research is the integration of the fundamental concepts of innovation in a framework with practical application in organizations of R&D+i. The information from the survey, as a mechanism for gathering information for the framework, showed its applicability in different R&D+i organizations, and the potential of the framework to aggregate dispersed innovation concepts. A generic ontology questionnaire, with potential for public availability to be reused in different areas of knowledge, is one of the results of the research that will bring benefits to the scientific and nonscientific communities

The development of a modified TRIZ Technical System ontology

This paper considers the development of a TRIZ Technical System ontology with the aim of facilitating the indexing of knowledge contained within available resources in a way that will make it accessible and useful to a user undertaking a design engineering task. The function of the developed ontology is evaluated using a case study, in which a patent is classified using the defined scheme. The quantitative nature of the classification structure developed to support this procedure offers a mechanism that may be further developed and integrated into research aiming to support the computerisation of the knowledge elicitation and representation process. The ontology developed to enable the classification methodology will support the integration of design by analogy procedures and enable effective information retrieval via the TRIZ based approach